WordPress hit by large DDoS

Blogging platform WordPress has been hit by a large DdoS which appears to have shut down some of its blogs.The attack began yesterday morning and lasted for about two hours. The DDoS attack was “multiple Gigabits per second and tens of millions of packets per second.

It hit all three data centres in Chicago, San Antonio and Dallas. The site is back to normal now but while it was happening it was the “largest” the outfit has ever seen. While the attack appears to have subsided, WordPress is working with the upstream provider on measures to prevent such attacks from affecting connectivity.

The attack seemed to be aimed at a non-English blog and might have been politically motivated, WordPress things. Apparently the usual suspect, the hacking group Anonymous, does not have the manpower or bandwidth to launch a truly massive DDoS attack like this. A botnet with “high hundred-thousands to millions” of computers would be required for sustained attacks.